287 Quotes by Lauren Groff

Everything is cyclical. Historical eras go through times of intense cynicism, broken by periods of intense idealism.

I think that writers have natural canvases, and my canvas, even in short stories, often seems to be the scope of a life.

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.

As with most of my work, I started from the abstract, from research, building an intellectual model that slowly became internalized when the characters came alive. It's fascinating what happens to the model you've so assiduously assembled when characters are allowed to run rampant: things you thought essential are broken and other things are vastly improved.

When I write new worlds, I work in layers, building and throwing out, and building anew.

It's not easy to make friends when you're an adult writer outside of academia, especially when you work alone in a little room for twelve hours a day, and so I wrote toward what I most longed for.

Writing is the lonely sport of sad sacks.

I try not to think too much or be too impatient, and let the back of my brain do its mysterious work.

Research is about following the gleam into the dark. It's also about being sensitive enough to know which fact is "the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders," as opposed to the fact that deadens and kills a delicate new project.